Chris Tune's Blog

So I am busying myself with Music and Computing

2009-11-23T14:13:00.000-08:00

So it is fairly official: I am playing bone as much as is humanly possible, while also training and improving my computing skills (these devices seem to be with us for the long run...). So, it would also make sense for me to post here more often.

I just got off a weekend out of town gig and am back in Van Nuys practicing, taking calls and cleaning up my kit (bones, clothes, mute bag)

Will play a rehearsal tonight and a few this week, though Thanksgiving will interrupt and therefore this week will likely be light.

Mostly practicing and networking

2009-10-03T12:01:00.000-07:00

I seem to be continuing to practice and practice. One thing this is showing me, is that I need to continue to do this to improve as a jazz player....an improviser. I am often simply in the other room with a boombox and some Aebersolds..

..when not cleaning the horn or running through basic chop "calisthenics". Otherwise, I will be playing something written, such as Rochut, or various recital style music....I have a bit of a collection of trombone recital type music....

Or....

I could be trying out some kind of "stunt"....

Stunt stuff would be going over and playing and practicing something you would not normally think a bone player would do. Recent examples are:

Circular breathing...more and more intricate efforts at polishing this activity.

Using the Yamaha practice mute to create an electronic instrument similar to an electric guitar (solid body type). This is demonstrated by Italian trombonist Nicola Ferro:

Or....

Learning the "Marie" trumpet solo done by Bunny Berigan....

That is just some stuff...also trying to stay on top of chores and what is going on in the world of the internet and software....web.....digi audio and video....

...and make all the gigs and rehearsals.....

not that I am dealing with too many gigs....some....

More and more music ... seems to be a whirlwind

2009-09-30T09:55:00.000-07:00

I am now taking everything I can in trombone land. I am trying to get the word out that I am the darndest, super-cool, freelancer trombone player you will ever have in your group...(hear that, contractors?). Have extensive experience in Top 40 band/ R&B...Jazz groups large and small....orchestras...chamber music (e.g. brass quintet) church music, theater work onstage and in the pit, and recordings.

I am in the Local 47 directory (will be in 2010 book), and can be reached at

(818) 309-8804 or (818) 763-9397

I come in from the Van Nuys area, so I'm centrally located for most LA based work. I also enjoy doing work with many of my longstanding friends from Orange County. So, I really get around this great big city.

PICS COMING!
So I am doing quite a lot of playing. Keeping my Union dues up, too!

[above is the racked equipment used in a festival here in town... also, you can see a big band setting up in Simi Valley, and nearby, and the thing we all like--applause...well, an "applause" sign, anyway..]

Nice to have a good gig...

2009-08-06T12:41:00.000-07:00

The music business can be pretty exasperating...perhaps Hunter S. Thompson had it right:

The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs
. There's also a negative side.

Be prepared to laugh if you decide to be a musician...it will be a better survival tool than the most powerful military hardware...and try not to be too much of a "good man"...

So that brings me to last nite's gig..it was great. I played with a great leader and band and his full troop of Rat Pack look alikes. We had Dean, Sammy and even Susan who is perhaps the most remarkeable Marilyn Monroe look alike in the world.

So, even though we had to do the somewhat corny "I Want to be Loved By You" and the other Monroe tunes, which are naturally a bit spoofy (it is important to note that the audience really gets a laugh out of this part of the show, as some poor schmoe gets his temperature raised by "Ms. Monroe" and her...anatomy)we had an hour or two where we did fake book work on "Song for My Father" and "Days of Wine and Roses" and "Moonglow" and so forth. The group included one of the best jazz trumpeters in the area, and perhaps in the world...and of course the woodwind guy and pianist were great jazz players. So I had to come up to the occasion...

I feel I did come up to the occasion. I used my good tone quality and some imagination as I did my style which is more of a "back to basics" with swing kind of style.

Anyway this situation make me feel like there is somebody out there listening and enjoying themselves. That is the whole point of playing a horn. To put smiles on faces...and it does not hurt that the rest on the band and leading or doing frontman work are nice folks who are great to work with. So thus goes a "good gig"

So it is nice to come back to town and have entertained someone.

Changing and changing times....I've MOVED!

2009-07-09T13:42:00.000-07:00

Well, the more things change, well...the more they change!

I no longer work as controller for Western Studio Services...there is probably not a lot to be gained by going over that...it was a very, very stressful job, so things are better that way, for sure.

That situation forced a coming to grips with the mortgage loan. That means selling Alcove Ave and taking the remaining equity out, waiting until the FICO improves and then re-entering the San Fernando Valley real estate market...

So now (as of mid 2009) the Tunes have moved to Van Nuys, into a smaller (1230 sq ft as opposed to 1640 sq ft) 3 bd home. This one has a pool, which is unusual for us Tunes. Nice garage...have to set up the packed stuff better to allow for a shop and so forth.

So in 2011 will be looking for a home in the valley. I'm thinking of going for land, and building to suit added size and rooms onto an existing structure. I find I really like carpentry, masonry, electrical, all that stuff. Thing to do, though is to find a way to make enough money to do all this building onto the home. All, while allowing for my personality and my music, and so forth...

Will be interesting times...what with the poor economy and with my highly varied interests and abilities.

I'm praying...I know G_d helps those who get up and move their derrieres. So off I go to do more work...

Tune

More Web

2008-08-20T17:13:00.000-07:00

Now we have set up with Fluidhosting. The URL of WesternStudioService.com does not have its "A" record set over to the new octet of the website hosting company. I will switch that on Network Solutions.

The way the records for DNS work on INTERNIC and Network Solutions is pretty interesting. Once you log into the editing tool on Network Solutions and you look at the mappings, you can see how your email and remote login could be done to your MS Exchange and SBS server WAN interface, while your website with the same ending of the Domain name (WesternStudioService.com) could very well point elsewhere.

That is what we are going to do. I appear to have to edit the "A" record and change the OCTET that shows in only one area of the record. Then, the domain name lookups and propagation of the tables will occur allowing users of web browsers to hit www.westernstudioservice.com and go to our new website.

Fascinating, really. . .

I've now got the pages set up for the main frontpage, the "about" page and all the locations maps. This is all set up with CSS so that you see a unified, floating, three-column layout with a widescreen picture of the buildings and yard at the Burbank facility. Menu is in upper right, and is totally CSS. This set of pages will really "pop" or "crack" onto screen. They are extreme in their compactness.

I still have the chore of creating web friendly reduced footprint images for use in a prototype picture gallery. The gallery will be the way to handle the subject of "lockup storage", or "storage", or "vehicles", or "trailers". The idea is to have a CSS based rollover gallery with bunches of text either before or below or as part of picture roll data, and then allow reasonably smallish jpg images to come up showing the good photos I got of all the facilities and types of rentals.

First I need to iron out the difficulties in getting a CSS based gallery to set right in the prototype page.

The Map thing went very well, and I would think that is harder. So I should be able to get the gallery done within a day or two or three.

Maybe I can look at how this is done on BLOGS. . .or Myspace or similar.

. . .hmmmmm.

Well, now I'm off to a rehearsal with Pierce College Jazz Band. Always busy.

Stay Tuned for Web Dev Stuff

2008-08-07T09:59:00.000-07:00

I'm doing the build of Westernstudioservice.com into a "customer oriented" web site. That means I'm taking the same marketing oriented basic website and changing it into a modern CSS based site with a logon for designated customers (several at first. . .possibly more later) who will be able to access a secure area to see PDF versions of their current inventory as printed by Michael Brittain.

Michael's database is based upon Filemaker, which is currently at version 9. I can see there is a web section to the filemaker product. It is possible I will ultimately have to either migrate the database to a SQL type engine like SQL Server or MySQL and have Michael's database talk to that, or to have the Filemaker work through the net with remote logons managed through the website.

For a first run, I'm interested in getting Filemaker reports available on a logged on basis, then I'll attack the redesign necessary to allow for up-to-the-minute access of a database of inventory specifics with possible online control of various queries and reports.

Meanwhile the CSS part of the redesign seems to be going well. I've got a template and an image that is fixed for the front page. I've come up with a set of verbiage for the promotional part. I'm in process of getting Google Maps signed up (that is how I wound up here for a few minutes).

Anyway, back to the battle.

Tough to LOOK AT. . .We Need to Remind Ourselves.

2008-02-21T08:31:00.000-08:00

This video is very hard to look at. But we NEED to remind ourselves, not just of the events of 9-11, but of the nature of the enemy. We are at war, but so many of our populace simply ignore the fact.

This war is unlike any other in that it is fundamentally based not upon pure political matters like the two world wars, the Korean Conflict and Vietnam, but instead is based upon a distorted version of religious fervor.

One thing that libs do have right is their fear that religion can result in great, unrelenting, irrational violence. The Fascists, socialists and communists knew that too, and therefore they sought to create a religion of the state. The state takes the place of family and God.

Fast forward to today's middle east and outward to the festering pockets of militant extremist Islam, and you have the same thing, without a very clear political goal. The very fact that these people do not even have a clear idea what they would do, in detail, if they were to achieve their goals, speaks volumes about their effort.

Islamic terror will go on, and on. Be brave. We will need it. We will need it much more if we have a weak leader such as Obama, and we will still need it, if our leader is strong such as John McCain.

Chris

FAILURE to make Concert

2007-12-03T07:40:00.000-08:00

Well I could not make the Church Christmas concert. My pastor joked (I hope he was joking. . .) too bad Chris has to find another Church to go to. . .

You see Pastor Wade is an excellent trombonist in his own right, and now, with me stuck in Mobile, AL . . .or actually flying somewhere over the great U.S. South or Southwest on my way to LAX. . .well, Wade had to go it alone on the Christmas concert. I'm going to really have to make it up to the man. . .to all the guys and gals at the concert.

Maybe I can fix them some kind of great dinner or something.

At least a representative of the Tune family was able to make the concert. Adam played clarinet on the performance at 5pm Sunday. He thought it went well. I know the choir is sounding great, so I had every reason to expect a great concert.

I've learned what happens when you try to stuff a lot into a complicated weekend of air travel and musical performing. Things can go very, very wrong indeed.

Absolute Nightmare with Airline Travel

2007-12-02T06:09:00.000-08:00

This is the worst I've yet experienced with airline travel in doing music. I accepted a gig to go with Direct From Vegas - The Rat Pack and, of course the gig part of this trip went very, very well. However, the airlines and the connections were very bad:

In setting up this blog entry I should explain that the flight out was provided by the producer and this involved getting to LAX Thursday morning. I was told by my company, however that I absolutely could not be out Thursday. So I first figured that I could get a separate leg flight out from Burbank airport and would be able to fly in to Chicago later and join the orchestra and cast in Elgin, IL.

I was able to pull this off with an arrival in Elgin at around 2am Elgin time. So far so good. . .

Now as we flew from O'Hare to Mobile, AL the really bad things began to happen. The set of flights purchased as part of the Rat Pack gig, were designated by the airlines as "use all, or lose all". This was NOT OBVIOUS from an examination of the usual documents seen when scheduling flights. I had very carefully read the internet emails and documents that were provided for this set of flights.

Now, once we spoke to the O'Hare airport ticketing agent SUPERVISOR at the American Airlines desk, we now understood that American Airlines was going to ADAMANTLY stand by this policy of use all legs or lose all legs. Despite the fact that there were plenty of seats available and that the supervisor was aware that this was a group reservation for an orchestra and cast travelling for performances. And also despite the fact that this is the Christmas season, and would normally be a great time for charitable help to others. . .

Nothing was done to truly mitigate the situation. We received sympathetic facial expressions and statements from the desk persons and supervisor at AA ticketing, but there was no way I was going to get on that flight that we had bought and paid for. The steadfast position of AA staff was that each and every dot and tilde of the legalese in the contract MUST have been read, in order to have checked off "I agree" on the website and thus, their part of the contract was complete and no amendments would be able to be made.

Thus, I now had to buy for myself an additional ticket in order to join the cast in Mobile. We had had a very successful concert in Elgin, IL and then went on to have a very, very successful concert in Mobile, AL.

Now this meant four hours of sleep the evening of Fri/Sat and also four hours of sleep on Sat/Sun night's shift. When we transported our nine person group to the Mobile, AL airport, the next really, really bad news came out.

There was a large police blockade on the main roadway into the airport from downtown Mobile. A dead person had been found on this roadway and fully a dozen police crusers were blocking any passage through the road.

This meant that we arrived eight minutes late for check in for my US Airways flight. Once again the desk could truly not help. The theme is consistent, and we realize that we need to be very careful in arriving at airports on time, but also I do not understand why everyone at a ticketing desk has not one scintilla of lattitude in helping the other persons arriving at their desks.

I had now spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars in order to get out on Thurday, as my company needed, and back on Sunday afternoon as my Church Concert needed. But nothing was coming off as planned at all. I was spending money hand over fist in order to get to my gig and to get back from my gig.

The expenses tally:

Roughly $155 outbound flight Burbank to Chicago
Roughly $80 taxi from O'Hare to Elgin
Unexpected $135 cost connecter flight from Chicago to Mobile
Roughly $390 flight home from Mobile (destroyed by the police blockade)

or $760 cost before parking charges
thus I had lost roughly ninety five dollars as I sat in the lounge in the Mobile Airport.

Also, my cell phone battery had died. So I could not be sure that I could communicate on this stuff.

So here I am posting from Mobile, AL and not able to say when I will be back HOME.

and now

Scott Leonard 50th B-Day!

2007-09-03T12:28:00.000-07:00

Another wild time we had recently was the very fun 50th birthday celebration for my boss, Scott Leonard (Scott, his brother Mark and Mark Simon are the owners of Western Studio Service).

Although Scott doesn't look a day over thirty, he was, in fact celebrating the great half-century mark, and so we used the "party room" at the Colorado facility. After major set dressing by Carrie Randazzo, and some real cool help from Don Reinhardt and Anders (last name?) from Village Christian School who set up some cool lighting and ran the slide show.

We had a band coming from our Sunday school group, which rocked us with oldies. We also had a very nice bit of fronting the band by Kelly Leonard who did a few tunes, and especially memorable to me, a kickin' "Sweet Home Alabama".

Here are some shots (note the genuine surprise on Scott's face - he thought there was a massive water leak going on upstairs at this building - well that was just the "pretext"):

Catch Up - Interesting Things in the Last Few Months

2007-09-03T10:52:00.000-07:00

I've had some very interesting things going on in the last few months. Of course this gave me very little time to post blog entries on the events. The first that comes to mind is the very last gig that I, or anyone else, will do at the Frontier Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

Nick De Gidido has basically always stayed at the Frontier and has put up his band members there. The Frontier was a great deal and it represents old Las Vegas, so we old fashioned entertainer types love it.

Here are the pics:

So you can tell that this was kinda wild. We had four horns, and guest bass player Gio Valle. We also had a sit in by my trombone teacher's son. Any of you who read all my stuff will know I was taught trombone by studio player (1947 to 1960 or so Paramount Studio Orch) Harold Diner. His son is a great, great drummer - Evan Diner. Evan has played with major persons including Nelson Riddle. So he fit in like perfection. Evan played a "head" with us, and then read a chart. He finds reading fun. Anyway this was a gas.

Touring Western Studio Service

2007-08-27T08:22:00.000-07:00

Here is my recent tour of the Main Location in Burbank:
The first image is the main alley in our Burbank 805 S. San Fernando, "main" location. Several of these buildings are either housing sets, lock up storage, or are devoted to individual "mills" (e.g. a set maker's shop).

Right now WSS has roughly 1.8 million square feet of storage in seven locations around the San Fernando Valley and Saugus.

The next image is an office / mill space. Once a manufacturing office or dispatch space, this is now a great area to be used for a production office space. Western generally offers superior rates for your production office needs. Also, Western has nearby storage for your sets, and can sometimes provide locations when industrial sites are the thing you need to do a shoot.

The third image is the doorway and front of a large warehouse building. This is our core business and we have dedicated warehousemen and truck drivers to make your storage of media-related materials a productive part of your job.

We also have an image of the interior of a warehouse being filled. You can also see a set of our grips loading sets into one of our warehouses.

Living in Hollywood

2007-08-25T13:30:00.000-07:00

It is sometimes remarkeable how we live here in the media capital of the world. As an example I've loaded a picture of Adam waiting in line right in front of Disney Studio's office complex with the identifying Seven Dwarves columns. Adam and I were over at Toontown Online's live meet "Toonfest". So we had fun and we only had to drive five or six miles over to Burbank to join in with the fun.

We saw some new features and Adam got to play for quite a while on some high end workstations set up for the Toonfest visitors.

Adam and his friend Philip also got to go onstage to participate in a Toontown Online trivia contest. They didn't ace the quiz but they got most right and had some real fun all day long.

Meanwhile, I continue to be very lucky and blessed in terms of getting to perform on trombone and in terms of generally having good productive work to do.

Hopefully, I can also contribute at work in terms of developing their web site. Now people often expect services to be offered via a web site logon. We have the server software, we simply need to development side. Once I can get the financial side set then I can concentrate on the development side.

Here is an example of our office having been redone in order to become a "set" for the recent Comedy Central show "American Body Shop":

Chris

Getting Back to the Blogosphere, the Web

2007-07-08T10:48:00.000-07:00

Now seems like the time that I will be blogging more and will be back developing my personal website. I'm moving the project at work into the final stages. This means that we will be doing work with more modern GL tools. This includes the ability to program using Visual Basic and kindred VB (e.g. VBA) to achieve business goals.

Some of those goals will be:

Advanced cash management
Budgeting (a first here)
Accrual Accounting
Management reporting of pricing and economics for storage rentals
Manpower costing and efficiency analysis
Pension accounting and compliance

This list is not necessarily in the order of importance. In fact, this is one of those situations where so many things are highly important that one wants to dive into all of them. We have some advances in each of those areas already, even without proper modern GL tools. And of course, a GL is a GL even if it were done using paper ledgers. The truth is, however, that modern tools allow for much quicker reporting and updating. Those tools allow for reuse of the existing information and extension of systems to cover specific areas unique to our business line.
BLOGGING
Now, I'm also very excited about what I saw during the recent vote on cloture in Washington D.C. The blogs helped, along with radio, to make the "people" (and I truly mean that in the sense the founders meant. . .just ordinary folk, who would not otherwise be directly involved in Federal political action) have a voice, a powerful voice with their elected officials. That means that people decided using the now omnipresent information they receive via the internet, to actually read a bill before congress, and to then use additional information provided by a wide variety of persons who had also looked but who have more extensive legal and civic backgrounds, to make decisions and then to contact their representatives and elected officials.

At one point in the debate, the Capitol switchboard went down and needed to be extended and rebooted. At many points it seemed as if individual fax machines were running out of paper, or ink or both. Phones were being answered, but with much difficulty.

FAIRNESS

Too bad that the political animal wants to remain aloof from his or her obligation to the people. It is right at this point in time that (mostly democrats. . .a few dinosaur republicans) reps on capitol hill are talking about reviving the fairness doctrine. For those who do not know what that is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine

It's pretty simple -- the government says what you will receive through the media. Big Brother kinda stuff! Not good!

Now, it may very well be that some sort of forum for economically challenged viewpoints should be provided (although I think we already have that in PBS - they generally trot out the looney left's every quirky whim on various subjects; of course there is also the major newspaper and TV outlets: NBC, CBS, CNBC, CNN, Wash Post, NYT Chi Trib, LAT, and the various "magazines"- these all are guaranteed to cover the left's perspective on each and every issue of the time). Right now, we have a pretty decent balance of discussion, IF, AND ONLY IF, you factor in the ability of the right to speak through radio. Once you establish that every outlet (frequently these actions actually exempt TV and Newpapers - WHY IS THAT?) has to balance time for both sides of the issue, you remove the commercial appeal to all outlets, thus making competition in political commentary obsolete. You establish that the commentary is managed by the government.

We should look at:

http://www.fairnessdoctrinewatch.org/

We need to kill this stuff! I was a regulator. I know that regulators should not establish political speech content. They should be kept a million miles away from that!

This isn't even a conservative position. This is a bipartisan position taken from the minds of such folk as Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Truman, and Eisenhower. You simply cannot cede your right to hear to the government.

Let us hope this stuff dies.

Chris

Roger Armstrong and ADP and oh boy what a day

2007-06-14T15:47:00.000-07:00

I’m just about to fold up and get ready to go to the Simi Valley “Towne Center” and do a gig with Bob Couto and his Big Band. I had an “interesting” day. That is in the sense, that the Chinese curse “may you live in ‘interesting’ times” means. We heard from ADP saying that our regular Union payroll would not occur unless we wired money to them. Well, that was because they did not release the payroll when asked to by our Payroll person. It came down to a “he said/she said” sort of thing and ADP did do the good thing of fighting to get the PR out. So it is only ½ demerit when taken in entirety. I’m really not that hot to judge them hard. I feel they are strong in the area of attention to changes in regulations. They are also dragging their big, bureaucratic organization forward, which, in itself, is quite an accomplishment.

Anyway we got an agreement to do the thing, including banking the way it should be. [I’m still holding my breath . . .] I will make the transfer I calculated as being needed.

When pulling out of the driveway this morning I saw an old buddy. That is Roger Armstrong. He was that old neighbor who is the one with everything. REALLY. Roger is a nice guy and I like him. I’ve always admired how he changed things up later in his life, after having become an executive at a motion picture studio. He chose to go to law school and he did well, ultimately making law review, and then working at two law firms here in Los Angeles. The second made him partner really early in the game. So, in effect he is a dyed-in-the-wool genius lawyer for entertainment intellectual property and deal making. His wife and kid are also pretty likeable. Lucky for us Tunes, he hangs out with Ed Balet next door. So we get to see Roger once in a while.

Cool. Roger is now living in Park City, UT and of course his son, Brett got in 40 days of skiing last ski season. Boy, oh boy. Here are some people who are working hard and also living the good life. Frankly, I’m also fascinated by the intellectual property arena, so, who knows, Roger and I may have some interesting conversations.

Chris signing off

Good thing mail works - Almost the only way to POST

2007-04-25T14:58:00.001-07:00

I almost think that there are not enough hours in the 24 hour day. I’m constantly moving from work to home to work to home, with an occasional stop off at church. Tonight, maybe I can stop at church. Maybe.

I’m also helping a person with trombone playing, so I may be late.

I’m up to my A** in Alligators to quote my predecessor here. The image does conjure up a dangerously busy person. I’m managing to keep the plates spinning.

[I prefer that old image of the guy who went out on the Ed Sullivan Show and started plates spinning on top of those long rods. . .]

At least now, I’ve got the email set up so that I’m Ctune@westernstudioservice.com That is as it should be.

The financial conversion is still moving along, even if it is a bit sluggish. I’m getting through this month’s close, with help from all those good workers we have. So, with that and some prayer, we’ll most likely be OK.

Chris

Mailing it in

2007-04-11T16:42:00.001-07:00

I’m testing this facility to allow me to post blog entries via email.

This should allow for an easier way to put up entries.

Today is my birthday. I’m old. Well . . . maybe not that old.

Gina gave me a nice plant for the office and I got lots of cards and stuff. They had sundae icecream at lunch.

Overall this was not bad.

Bach 42B is great. . .and IE speedup works

2007-04-06T12:18:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty certain I'll buy the horn. The closed wrap model is probably a good thing, since I'm sorta clumsy and would likely bend up an open-wrap horn. So, together with a reasonable price, that makes the decision to buy pretty easy.

The hack increasing the number of simultaneous connections to IE (I'm using ver 7) seems to work well. The same site also had a way of increasing speed with Firefox. I use both browsers now, quite often. IE gets used particularly when an ASP.NET type page seems not to work right with Firefox.

I am a bachelor now for a week. Michele and Adam went to a Mexico mission trip where lots of Christians from all over North America go down and help churches in Mexico. They should be back in a week. I may see if there was any blogging or pictures available of previous trips.

Michele is warning me that the house better be neat when she returns. Maybe this is an opportunity to just focus on cleaning and organizing. I'm playing music on Easter Sunday, so that starts really early at 7am and on Saturday I'm working, so there really is no reason to goof that much with the computer or anything else this weekend. The bedroom could really use some organizing. The big thing would be to get the records back into the storage shelving above the garage parking area.

The garden is doing well. We had a landscaper come and recommend and then Mich and I went out and bought plants on the cheap. The New Zealand Flax that I like is in a few places as are "Butterfly bushes" and other neat plants. So the "cottage garden" look is more the style out front like Michele wants.

Seem to be making progress in dealing with CarrierPak and Thoroughbred Basic and so on at WSS. The way that you "expand" database files is now obvious. Maybe some other BASIC utility could be used to make copies of files and convert them. . . . hmmm. . . .

Signing off

Bach 42B

2007-03-21T07:42:00.000-07:00

I'm deciding if I will buy Dick Nash's Bach 42B. Steve Ferguson had it at his store. I took it home to try out. It plays well. From the serial number, it appears to be of 1982 or 83 vintage, so it is actually newer than virtually any of my other horns.

Nonetheless, it is of the older design. The closed, compact valve section. The question I guess is how much better does a symphony tenor with F attachment play if it has the open valve design? Is this really a big deal?

I'm thinking it really may not be a big deal. I played an open version 88H about five months ago, having borrowed it, and it was not that much different.

I'll just have to decide. I could use a large bore with F attach.

SpikedHumor.com » Lightning Fast Browsing Trick For Internet Explorer And Firefox » SpikedHumor.com

2007-03-01T17:47:00.000-08:00

SpikedHumor.com » Lightning Fast Browsing Trick For Internet Explorer And Firefox » SpikedHumor.com

This is video describing how to improve speed performance for high bandwidth internet connections. It increases the number of connections allowed to something higher than the defaults. There are two separate instructions - one for Firefox, and another for Internet Explorer.

Hope it works. Hope I have time to try these.

Chris

NUGE is getting nudged to hurt Zumbo. . .Libs rejoice!

2007-02-24T18:16:00.000-08:00

Now we are chewing our own legs off, or so it appears when looking at the 2nd amendment community.

Veteran writer Jim Zumbo commented that he thought it was stupid to use an "assault rifle" (sometimes also called "black rifle", since the AR-15, for example is black plastic in many areas). Now, he has lost most of his gigs with magazines and the NRA, and many of the gun enthusiasts are just fine with that. Also, I note that some are now trying to tell Ted Nugent what to do. . . .(not a good idea, mind you!). He has posted apologies and restatements of position from the 67 year old gun writer. . .apparently, Zumbo made his dumbo comments about "terrorist" rifles and now lots of folk think this is "ammunition" for more efforts to abolish certain types of rifles, and pistols.

I think this is "throwing the baby out with the bathwater". We don't need to chew up veteran, 40 year NRA member authors regardless of WHATEVER they may say, and regardless of whether it is in print or on a blog. The author has 1st amendment rights in addition to 2nd amendment rights. And, yes, that doesn't obligate his continued contracts with anybody, but then there is "the spirit of the law" to think about. I would say the spirit of these two amendments to the Constitution are:

Amendment 1- Unfettered political speech is good, PROTECT IT.

Amendment 2 - Private gun ownership is good, PROTECT IT and it will protect you.

There is much I've heard from experts and ordinary men, which agrees with just this set of statements.

Who knows, maybe even some of the more rabid folk on both sides of this issue may learn something. And, that would have come from a political argument playing out on the internet.

MEDIA:
Like how happy the MSNBC author must have been (thrilled, I'm sure. . .as were his editors) to find NRA and others chewing up one of their own on nothing more than his comments. That is the essence of this. Of course there is a lot of sensitivity, and most of it pretty justified from the pro AR-15, AK-47 crowd. And I'm pretty sure that 2nd amendment authors DID THINK MILITARY when penning the amendment, after all, they said "MILITIA", right in the very same text.

You see there is nothing fundamentally different about a semi-auto rifle with a large capacity clip, as opposed to a hunting rifle. In fact, there are hunting rifles which can take much the same ammunition as an AR15. The only real functional differences have to do with magazine quantities, and with the "look" of the rifle. Also, pointing out a plain fact: There are hunting weapons which make an AR or an AK look like a pea-shooter. [think high velocity .50 calibre monster, big game hunting rifles. . .would stop a truck. . .most likely!]

Also, if you think about it REAL HARD, you will realize that virtually any long range kill in hunting is essentially identical to SNIPER action. You hide, you perform a kill with the weapon and you usually don't get a second chance. That seems to me to be sniping and hunting, in "ad reductio" form. . .

so, on we go, I can hope we get back together and don't blow anything with this brouhaha.

Chris Tune

Politics - AGAIN . . .I can't stay silent while thousands of morons rally in Washington

2007-01-27T14:34:00.000-08:00

TENS OF THOUSANDS DEMAND IRAQ WITHDRAWAL
Forbes covers the AP Feed on this. . .and my mind says:

That means that there are more people gathered in D.C. listening to Jane Fonda, and others than the KIA in Iraq in the three years of action there.

We now have slightly more than 3,000 KIA in the Iraq war. During the war in which Jane Fonda committed TREASON, [we lost slightly more than 47,000 KIA in Vietnam] we lost in excess of ten times as many soldiers.

During the very first BATTLE that the US Marines fought in World War I, (in France, part of a combined breakout effort by French, British and US forces). . .the Marines lost roughly 5,000!

YES five thousand souls lost their lives for a single mission. . .they did this in the course of a very few days, and for the goals of ONE BATTLE.

I believe sincerely that Jane Fonda, and all the other anti-war protesters are INSULTING all those who lost their lives for these other wars. Whether WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, or other actions which are more recent (such as Grenada, Panama, Desert Storm), we must be aware of the actual losses. The losses they are protesting are so small in comparison to these previous instances of warfare that protesters should really be embarrased to be claiming concern. It is evident to me, that politico's are simply USING the fact that there are some KIA in Iraq, in order to suit their purposes. They are not doing this out of any real sympathy for the killed or the wounded. Look at how they use this Cindy Sheehan woman. They make sure her every movement is covered. . .they make sure she has tents, she has ample coverage.

Is this because of sympathy for her? Or is it because they realize that she has "street cred" and can be USED TO GOOD EFFECT

It is our responsibility as citizens to have FACTS in hand when making our decisions. To do anything less, is simply engaging a fad. The protesters, frankly are simply rallying to the most current "cool thing" that they can do, having largely engaged in really no solid research regarding wars. . .warfare. . .the nature of world conflict. . .the reasons that there is an IRAQ, and IRAN, and anything relevant about this conflict.

So you and I have to accept that we will be less safe. . .that our children and grandchildren will be less safe. . .in order to satisfy the urges of the Fondas and idiots of this world. . .

. . thanks a lot.
crt

New Job. . .Accounting. . .Dynamics GP

2007-01-24T09:53:00.000-08:00

The title is linked to a page for "Convergence 2007", a Microsoft Dynamics oriented convention scheduled for 2007 in San Diego. On this page, there is a list of blogs having to do with MS Dynamics. So, if you found this blog because of a search on Microsoft Dynamics, feel free to pop over to the list. I think it could be useful. Don't forget to bookmark this blog, especially if you like Jazz music, and/or trombone.

DYNAMICS-IS. . .WELL, DYNAMIC!
As I thought, Dynamics is having a wonderful run-up with coverage by the user community, hip EDP-oriented , bloggerly folks with much to say about this very powerful financial software. I'm looking forward to learning more about what all those users and developers out there are doing with Dynamics.

Here at Western Studio Service, we plan on implementing MS Dynamics GP starting this coming month (February). This should vastly improve on ledger function and provide a base with which to fully track and manage information in this very , very good company.

WSS is the leading provider of storage service for the Entertainment Industry here in Los Angeles, CA (i.e. Hollywood, "beautiful Downtown Burbank", etc.). Beyond warehousing, WSS also provides some rental services and cartage services. Everything in this company is geared around very full service, with our customers and especially those in the "biz" expecting and appreciating that level of involvement by a storage and cartage company.

Expect more on the learning process and on where you can go to move from being a saavy EDP-oriented person, toward being a Dynamics "guru". [hopefully, that paint I ordered for my forehead will come in soon. . .then it's going to be a "religious experience". . . :-) ]

Stay "Tuned"

Chris Tune

Rosolino and Technique

2007-01-12T12:10:00.000-08:00

I was listening to Frank and his video of him doing Monk's "Well You Needn't" and was astounded as he did the melody over both in the low octave and in the upper octave. You should note that this is a leaping melody which starts on a low C and leaps up a fourth to an F and then does a "bebop" sounds down to F# (with a sort of tritone sound to them). The point is that there are these very high brief upper notes to the "bebops". . .the "tops" of them, so to speak.

The range is very, very high. And Frank sounds like this is simply not very difficult at all. This tune was the last one played on this half hour show. He then immediately launches into the theme music and again plays in tessiatura that is simply not supposed to be on the trombone -- it is more trumpet range, if you look at the orchestration books.

Now Frank played a very small mouthpiece but a medium bore conventional trombone (a Conn 6H. . .a .500 bore medium trombone model common in 1945 through 1979. . .really this is the most common of common horns).

The mouthpiece is supposedly the equivalent of a Bach model 15. . .a very small and likely shallow mouthpiece. . .but come on!. . .He doesn't squeak out double high G's . . . .he simply WACKS them out. . .virtually blasting them! His command of high range is akin to the way Nash could do it. Simply oddball-astounding.

Now the main ingredients of high playing are similar to that of good jazz playing. Good ear training (to hear the pitches properly). Cool and calm, and confidence. . .(so you don't get psyched-out of the idea of hitting these pitches) and mainly - STRENGTH.

Strength comes from face time. You get more muscle from using your muscles to exhaustion and then recovering. This is strength training in a nutshell.

Imagine all the time this guy must have spent playing the trombone. Phenomenal!

Chris Tune

Dick Nash on Vibrato

2006-12-26T20:24:00.000-08:00

Here is studio ace, Dick Nash discussing the ballad style technique of vibrato. Here is someone who can really play the heck out of a ballad discussing this key tecnique for singing style.

Bird and Diz!

2006-11-29T22:45:00.000-08:00

You also have to get through the awards part BECAUSE Bird and Diz do "Hothouse" and there is much great soloing. This is so far back Diz had not had the bend in his bell . . .the upward tilted bell he was known for. . .that was yet to come. This is 1951. This is BEBOP! After you listen to this, then you can tell people you know what bebop is. . .(the term is misued like so many others in jazz).

Charlie Parker & Dizzy
Uploaded by trombone-usa

More Jazz Trombone

2006-11-29T21:53:00.000-08:00

Since this is the world of Web 2.0 and that means that web pages are more and more assembled out of "pieces" of data from all over. . .then by all means we should hip ourselves to the very estimable Mr. Rosolino as he bebops on the most difficult of instruments to do that on. . .the trombone.

Here is yet another great performance by Frank Rosolino playing jazz trombone to the utmost. Frank introduces this tune as being by "Monk, who writes with the 'funk' and that's no 'bunk'. . ." :)

Frank Rosolino VI
Uploaded by trombone-usa

This is truly the guy you need to listen to if you are going to try and survive as a bebop trombone jazz player. You would also do well to listen to JJ Johnson, Kai Winding, Carl Fontana, Curtis Fuller, and really a host of other worthy bone players. But perhaps the important thing about Frank is that we have a lot of high quality and it is available to be heard. Don't be misled by false notions of "West Coast Jazz" vs. "East Coast Jazz". . .the terms really are pretty well abused. Rosolino is pure bebop and would have fit right in with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie or Fats Navarro. These terms like mentioned above are for pedestrians and music critics. . .or basically non-performers.

I got a couple of chances to ask guys of Frank's stature about how to do this. . it is basically this simple: "I play by EAR". And when you hear bebop then you do bebop. It is the hearing part that takes some real work. . .

Jazz Trombone

2006-11-24T23:24:00.000-08:00

I'm devoting my site to jazz trombone from here on out. I've seen how political blogs can get "blogged" down . . .what is more fun than music? And since I particularly like jazz like Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie and Jack Teagarden. . .and well this guy below. . .well then this site should mainly be about jazz trombone.

I'm unsure if this will work but this is supposed to be Frank Rosolino:

Frank Rosolino II
Uploaded by trombone-usa

We shall see. . .won't we?

Or maybe you will see one of the greatest to ever blow jazz on this awkward instrument, the trombone. Frank was probably "certifiable" in a lot of different senses of the word, I'd tend to remember him as certifiably the greatest bebop trombone player (I even have to shift the very, very fine JJ and Kai down to just beneath this guy. . .he's that important to me in the world of bop).

Anyway stay tuned.

Chris

The WORD

2006-10-25T16:00:00.000-07:00

This is very good news. The many open source items available now provide wonderful, FREE, software sources. I have several of them. . .Open Office (much like MS Office). . .Audacity (Digital Audio Recording) and several others. In fact, free software these days can allow you to do almost anything. . .so always look at the open source before you dive in and BUY.

The Bible is available in really quite a few translations in open source form, with a project called SWORD (probably more like S WORD, as in "Software Word". .more likely knowing Christians, rather than the weapon thingy. .)

For those of us who are interested in studying the bible, as I believe most intelligent folk are. . .this is . . .well. . .a GODSEND. Now you can put this on any computer you have and can be content that you have a legal copy of the word on your computer and can search it and research it at your own pace.

Can you tell I'm happy about this? Of course it is a good idea also to have a hard copy of this book.

What is WRONG with Andy Rooney? . . .Noam Chompsky?

2006-05-31T07:33:00.000-07:00

Andy Rooney says he is not going to think about those who have died to protect our country. . .he claims that war is our LEAST noble deed. . .he doesn't get it. He is so simple that he is not just a FOOL, but is FOOLING everyone. No nuance. . .no thought. . .no MEAT to his actual ravings. Does he honestly think that war against Hitler or against Pol Pot, or against EVIL. . .is not Noble? Not at ALL? Does he not discriminate between one action and another similar action? Can't he tell if WWII was justified on the part of the Allies? After all Hitler had repeatedly attacked most of Europe! This wasn't an action of Britain, or the U.S. Herr Hitler did it! Andy? . . . Andy? . . .WAKE UP!!!

Laura Ingraham lapsed a bit today. . she seemed to think that she has to respect her elders. . . .actually I believe the commandment is to "honor your mother and father. ." There is no requirement for a Christian to respect older folk who are obviously weak of mind. . .any Christian will doubtlessly LOVE this brother and will HELP this brother. . but he doesn't have to pay any mind to their ravings. . .

CHOMPSKY

Ravings. . .LEBANNON is smarter than he thinks. . .there are lots of folk in LEBANNON who realize that the United States is not less conducive to PEACE than Hezboallah. . .or Hamas. . .they know what is actually going on in the Middle East. Hamas is not a bunch of Nuns or Priests. . .

Lebanese know Nuns and Priests. . .they have an active Christian community. .they are right on the path that the Moslem wave took early in its history. . .they know about radical Islam and will not forget just because some IDIOT from MIT comes over and deigns to speak on their "third world" (Chomsky's thoughts no doubt) broadcasts. . .

Chomsky will pass on sooner than most of us. . .that is small consolation but it is consolation nonetheless. . .

Chris

Adam and Daisy, the Dog. .

2006-05-20T11:40:00.000-07:00

This was taken several years ago. Daisy seems to want to hog into the picture a bit. Adam is having a good time. This is in the back yard on the swing Michele and I made.

Michele as a kid. . .CUTIE!

2006-05-20T11:38:00.000-07:00

This is the KID PICTURE from my wife, Michele. I think she was very cute. :-)

Back when I looked like Adam. . .my son

2006-05-20T11:35:00.000-07:00

This is what I looked like at around age 7 or 8. Now, Adam was looking a LOT like this just a few years ago. Funny how the "circle of life" goes. . .I guess we have a pretty lovable little bloke here. . .? Yeah. . it's cool being a kid. . . I was pretty thrilled to be "ridin' herd as a 'cowpoke'"

Our "Direct from Vegas" gig in February

2006-05-20T11:27:00.000-07:00

This was a great gig. The "Direct from Vegas" The Rat Pack. . .show. This was Don Gustafson and myself on bones. . .Scott Strecker, leader. . .and other than hassles from Local 47, was a pure pleasure experience. . this was a "verbatim" style performance replicating the rat pack schtick. . you should know that is the way Sammy and Dean and Frank did it. . .they had written material which they tossed into the show in a loose, improvised manner. It allowed them to do shows solo, or with various combinations of the rat pack guys. . .I have a couple of show recordings of the three. . and a couple with just Frank or with just Dean. The same jokes. .different persons delivering. . different "victims". . .heh!. . .heh!

This is very funny and is done with a real, live big band!

2006-05-20T11:15:00.000-07:00

2006-05-08T09:53:00.000-07:00

The heart of the matter. . to my trombone player heart; here are the Kanstul bones

2006-05-08T09:51:00.000-07:00

NAMM is really huge; here we see some of the immense Roland set

2006-05-08T09:49:00.000-07:00

Kanstul and its excellent brass instruments. Steve Ferguson also carries these excellent horns

2006-05-08T09:48:00.000-07:00

Here is a bit of the NAMM show from a year ago; I liked some of these horns a lot

2006-05-08T09:45:00.000-07:00

Here are Alan Kaplan (studio trombonist extraordinaire!) and Steve Ferguson (with several of his inventory of excellent trombones . . .he also sells tubas, horn and trumpet and all the best ancillary items like mutes and mouthpieces). This is at John Sandhagen's "Boneyard" meet after Easter a few years ago. Alan is holding a copy of my CD with my home recordings. He liked the playing and was very nice about listening to it and commenting.

2006-05-08T09:39:00.000-07:00

Imagine this as a CONDO! I'm having a spaz attack over this! Thanks a lot Hip Hoppers! You are really helping out!

2006-05-08T09:37:00.000-07:00

Here is an old photo from about four or so years ago; it was in the famous Studio A at Capitol; I heard that there is thought about converting the Capitol Records building into a condo or apartments! [boy! all that history. . .] as you walk through the hall you see black and white framed photos of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. . .in the same studio you are working in. This session was with Nick DeGidio. . .I'm hoping for good things for his songs. . they are hip and aggressive swing tunes.

2006-05-08T09:34:00.000-07:00

Here I am with horn a couple of years ago in the Burbank Starlight Bowl; this was a "Direct from Vegas - The Rat Pack" show, that means it was GREAT! This is a hoot; imagine Frank and Sammy and Dean right there. . .doing their routines and singing. . just like at the Sands in the sixties. . .

2006-05-08T09:30:00.000-07:00

Adam and Michele at the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland; this was several years ago when we had an annual pass

2006-05-08T09:27:00.000-07:00

Adam and I hiking at Vasquez Rocks; this was about four years ago

2006-05-08T09:26:00.000-07:00

Adam at Legoland; he is trying his best to be a good driver

2006-05-08T09:25:00.000-07:00

Another cute photo of Adam taken outside as he and I goofed around out front

Adam Photo

2006-05-08T09:13:00.000-07:00

Adam school photo from a couple of years ago; I think he's got a handsome smile here
I was able to contact Suelyn Tune over in Hawaii. That was quite a thrill. We have kind of dropped contact between the Hawaii Tunes and the Los Angeles Tunes. Of course some of this is just how busy both groups must inevitably be. . .but also we were used to having older folk keep in touch socially and Irene was that social guardian. I miss Irene. . .MOM. She was a good person aside from being mother to us kids. I'm not sure everybody gets to say that. Some must be well aware that their parents are flawed in one way or another. Oh well. Now the job at hand is for Michele and I to do the best job we can do as parents. A hard job!

Here is a happy kid. Adam is doing well in school and is very smart in general. He likes all the different areas you can get into deeply. He is particularly adept in art and creative processes. You see that with his Lego work and with his creating things on the computer.

Frank and Dean's Success

2006-05-03T11:35:00.000-07:00

Last nite at Frank and Dean's was a great success. . . .well, except for PART of my audio recordings. . .the very last bit, with "Love for Sale". . the Buddy Rich version. Somehow the machine shut off after just one second of recording.

Luckily, I got full prints of the various other sections I hit record on.

The band played great and I had the mic out in the front row of the audience, so the balance was really good. Dave, the drummer played great and the jazz solos generally sounded good. We had the "regular" trombone section of Lori Stuntz, Paul Young, myself and John Sandhagen.

So. . I've got MOST of the gig, but not all.

Anyway, this is worth some mastering.

Along with several other things that would be good to master, I now have my work cut out for me.

Well. . .I will stay posted.

Grant HS Reunion

2006-05-01T13:30:00.000-07:00

Boy. . .I don't know if I should go to the thirtieth year reunion for U.S. Grant High, in Van Nuys. I guess I'm paranoid that someone I thought was a dope back in school will now be a billionaire and will make me feel just a few inches tall. . .

Also, I just got the news a week or two ago that John Voland died. That makes me very sad and reminds me again how much time has passed by since we all were in Grant High during the 1970s. Yeah. . ."Rock and Roll High School". . .hrrmph.

I see Artie Simon is on the committee for the reunion. That's a good thing. Artie is/was cool. I remember doing something musical where he was involved. And that was not THAT long ago (based upon the way my memory is now working it was probably twenty years ago!).

I'll probably go. You know, At least I have a suit and a tux and all that. Who knows the thing might be OK.

Michele has the house looking really nice out in front. She and her buddy Richard from work have been really working on the flower beds and have trimmed everything back. Now, all we really need to do is to remove this "orchid tree" thing. The season now, is for all these pods to open up and spit out tons of cotton. . .along with the seeds. What a drag having to run around each day and pick up cotton off the front yard.

I finally figured out that April is a potentially very stressful month for me. . .traditionally. Mom died during April. . .my birthday comes and goes. . .and I had the cat die this April. . .found out about Voland. Just a step away from depression or elation . . .that's what April seems to be about. Not the steadiest of platforms.

Well, now we are in May and the fools are out protesting something. . .NOT the real issue, mind you, but something anyway. Laura Ingraham was coaching today for everybody to go out and shop and go to work, etc. Even though I shopped Sunday, I still need to get memory for the PC. . so I will be over at Fry's standing in line returning memory modules "part deux" and getting something better. Maybe I'll just get a single 512 meg stick and try to mactch it to my existing Corsair XMS memory (higher caliber memory from this company). So part one was accidentally getting "single channel" memory. . .part two was getting "value" line Corsair. Next is "price is no object" type memory.

From the intermittent workings of Win XP with the 1.5 gig memory, I'd say Win XP is much better with lots of memory. I hope to have this settled soon.

Friday I'm off to the Desert for a gig. I'll see Bob Galleotti and others I've not seen in a while, so maybe it will be fun. Looking forward to a leisurely trip out. Will be starting really early.

NYT Comes up with a MAJOR find! Egad! News is skewed by PSY-OPS

2005-12-11T08:05:00.000-08:00

I had to laugh having consistently read the New York Times, at the TONE of concern in this article about psychological operations in the war on terror.

The NYT is simply the perfect place to go to study Psy-Ops. It engages in an advanced course of these operations every day and in every way. They have even created a television station to disseminate their unique view of the world. Together with CNN and the other Main Stream Media (MSM) the liberal intelligentsia has conducted a MIND-BENDING effort to change the world. . . .to MOLD the world into their political viewpoint.

The Times is particularly good at this type of operation. I've consistently noted various tricks used by the Times to bend reality to their viewpoint.

I'd love to see an article discussing every detail of how all the vast machinery of the Times operates. I'd particularly love to see transcripts of every word uttered in editorial review of articles as they make their way to print. After all, even the BEST journalists sometimes let something CONSERVATIVE actually slip into their writing. . .that is when the EDITOR steps in. . .and makes sure that the ultimate trend. . .the ultimate mind warp is LIBERAL!!!

I've been concerned about Psy-Ops for years. . .as I read it in the pages of the New York Times.

Chris Tune

What a BUSY time!

2005-12-11T00:30:00.000-08:00

I've been busy. . .and maybe being sick with a cold helped make it seem even MORE busy. Lets see: two gigs, scouting, Adam's concert. . sick with cold. . new, formidable accounting work.

Anyway, this last week included work with a new client through Accountemps. This is a profound amount of reconciling and managing the reconciliations of others. Quite a big task. . .then. . .naturally. . . .I get a cold. . .

Anyway, I could not get it together to obtain a substitute for the regular Jack Lantz "gig" at Frank and Dean's. Soooo!! I just got a babysitter for Adam and off I go. . .reeling from the cold and did the gig. It wound up being quite fun. I was the only regular to make the bone section. We had Vick Steelhammer on Bass bone, Bryant Byers on lead, myself and another on 2nd, whom I forget now. . .sent by Paul Young. I should say another quite GOOD player.

Brenda Goforth was out in the audience. Then she was up on the bandstand with horn in hand. She spelled a couple of the trumpeters. That was a good thing. Gave the guys a chance to have a relaxing drink and a listen to the band. And gave us a chance to hear Bren play.

The gig went well. . .turned out it was Frank's birthday! He sang a couple of tunes with us. Went quite well! I've heard professional singers do worse! Naturally, Frank KNOWS the Frank Sinatra tunes!

I didn't record this one. Probably should have. I was really pretty sick.

Then I do the Thurs nite Coudo band rehearsal. This right after my son, Adam has his first concert on clarinet. Naturally he did great! I think he really likes this stuff. We'll see. He's certainly got an "artist" type of sense of the world.

Then I get back to work and start checking my messages and Danny DeLurgio had a gig on Friday. I figured that he had already found another bone player, but I called him back a coupla times. Turned out he hadn't filled the spot.

So Fri morning I arranged to get off work right at five and headed out to Orange County. Wound up a bit late for set one, but the gig was really quite nice. It was the Christmas party for Affinity Bank in Ventura, CA. This was a group of about twenty or thirty folk and it was held in a medium sized hotel in Costa Mesa. The food was excellent and the audience was really, really nice. Just as I would expect from folk from Ventura. These are "the good guys". Another stellar small business bank in California.

We did Danny's regular stable of Sinatra and similar tunes, and a few of the pop tunes Danny had on "singalong" recordings.

We had Pat Chartrand on tenor sax and Ray Zapeda on soprano sax (doing the trumpet parts). Yours truly on bone. another fun gig! Pat knew one of the bankers from his "pro-golfer" life. Small world! I think there is a connection between the great golfer and the great musician. They both require extremes of focus and concentration and yet also require profound spacial ability and poise in stressful situations. Turns out that Frank Rosolino was quite and excellent qolfer. Alan Kaplan is another I can think of who is quite a good golfer.

Now, on Saturday, Adam and I go over to Lowe's in Burbank to put in our time selling mistletoe for the Cub Scouts. Seemed like we had SOME business. Not like the lucrative gift wrapping that the Boy Scout troop has. This non-profit fundraising is hellacious! I think everything is OK ($$) with the scouts here though. . .

Didn't even have much time to think about politics. Must be BUSY!

Chris

Microtrak is GOOD

2005-11-28T19:46:00.000-08:00

I'd have to say that I'm happy with the M-Audio Microtrack. While the first version of the operating software (updateable into flash EPROM) had bugs, the new version mostly corrects these goofs:

Now no "bump" sound in the phones when booting up
Switches the H and L selections on the level button (these had been reversed)
Shows a VU meter while playing back
Now shows a VU meter with a peak hold function while readying for recording (in pause)
The signal is audible in phones while in REC + PAUSE
Smoother metering and resolves some inaccuracies in graphic items on screen

[still has only 30v output for the mic phantom power. . .some mics won't work this low]

The whole concept of these new CF (Compact Flash) recorders is that they are quiet, having no moving parts, and are small, with high quality audio specs.

My goal is to capture "scratch audio" of the various groups I play trombone with. I had been lugging a laptop along with me, which provides lots of options for processing audio. The laptop interface has a phantom power capability which I haven't tested yet.

What I was hoping for here was to reduce the weight and bulk of the recording gear without sacrificing quality. I think I've got that. There would be a need to do more extensive micing and baffling to get really good captures of big bands, so I'm not really trying to do that.

This unit excels for someone like a regular with brass quintet playing or a college kid wanting to get snap recordings of his college ensembles. The unit comes with a CD that has Audacity, the open-source, free digital audio recording software. The manual is the other content on the CD. There is also a USB 2.0 cable, a power/USB adapter, a T-shape stereo (electrets) mic and a 64meg CF card.

I bought a one gig CF card right away so I'd be less limited as to time. I've been using the mpeg at 320 Kbps. The unit also goes up to 24bit 96khz audio which I'd not be likely to use.

Battery life is a bit whimpy, but then I'm normally setting up a power strip anyway for my music stand light. I can put the unit plugged in to get recharged. I'm thinking this is going to be pretty good. I'll post more as I do more.

M-Audio MicroTrack

2005-11-09T14:11:00.000-08:00

I picked up the M-Audio Compact Flash recorder this week and I tried a scratch recording of a rehearsal last night. This was late, after the horns left, so all I was getting was an electric guitar player going over tunes with another musician. The sound seemed pretty good. I could detect my gum chewing sound and the interface was pretty obvious. I have looked for reviews on a Google of the device and have found some people are unhappy. Looks like those folks are expecting too much, however. There is a concern about the ability of the thing to put out ONLY 30 volts for phantom power. I was wondering about that, since it seemed that the phantom powering would detract from the battery time, anyway. My Rode stereo mic allows for a nine volt battery to be popped into the body, and that will be the way I will go when using the Rode.

I'm looking forward to getting some music recorded this week, and I'll come back and discuss the results once I've recorded.

LAST WEEKEND:

I had recorded the gig with Danny DeLurgio at a dance this weekend. Got the combo doing "Sophisticated Lady" and some other standards. This was with the Rode stereo mic, thru the M-Audio "pre" and into the HP laptop. Since this is getting to be a bit heavy to carry around, I'm looking forward to the truly tiny M-Audio MicroTrack. This could be carried in your pocket.

Chris

Sore Throat Was Only Way to Get Time

2005-10-20T08:50:00.000-07:00

Seems I'm so busy lately between accounting work by day and musical rehearsing and gigging by night and weekend, that I'm not able to post here as often as I'd like. Now, I've gotten a pretty sore throat from the thing going around at work, and I'm having to set up a doctor visit today. This finally gave me a little time to post here.

The blogging has resulted in a very nice coincidence-a la "classmates.com":

One of my acquaintances from high school at U.S. Grant High in Van Nuys, CA contacted me and we were able to update each other somewhat. Here is the text of most of Sean's message here:

>Chris - how delightful to happen upon your site. Mazel tov on your various doings. I was Perchik in Fiddler at Grant in '76, when Mr. Neill was stage crew as well as orchestra leader. I now live near Cleveland, Ohio, and direct internal communications for Goodyear.
[end quote]

I've omitted Sean's email address so he doesn't have too much responsive mail.

Sean did a great job as Perchik and was always a very nice guy back in school and I'm glad to see that his excellent communications skills are being used well. Ohio, is a nice place, from what I can determine. I guess it's my midwestern style personality coming out.

Still busy, so I'll have to post again, later.

Chris

BRUSH FIRE!!

2005-09-29T11:59:00.000-07:00

I had quite a commute home last nite. .the fires in Chatsworth and Simi Valley made sure I, and many tens of thousands of other motorists had this great "exodus" of a commute.

I had to take the 23 fwy south to the 101 fwy. . .but, like so many others, I decided to get off right before the junction of those two freeways and go via surface streets through Thousand Oaks and Westlake.

By the time I got near the east side of Westlake (right before Agoura) I'd had enough! I jumped back on the 101 and took what came to me. . .it wasn't as horrible as I had imagined. . .or as it was on the 23.

The 118, Ronald Reagan fwy is open again and is much less crowded today. The landscape on the side of the freeway is like something from Hell. . .all the brush and shrubs are blackened. The homes on the hills, all seem to have been spared, though.

Tonight should be interesting. . .I've got an eight o'clock rehearsal. Yeesh!

Lots Going On

2005-09-21T12:54:00.000-07:00

I'm just barely managing to find to time to update. . . I've had a busy few days. I had to deal with rain-related problems yesterday and over the weekend, I had a couple of interesting things going on. . .

Sunday, Dick Nash hosted the annual jam session for Jeannie Moody. This has been going on for roughly thirty years. The jam is at Ms. Moody's house right on the beach at Playa Del Rey. . on her back porch facing the water. Dick sets up PA equipment and plays his always delightful jazz trombone.

This year, I thought I had a gig Sunday night and could not spend very much, if any time, at the Moody jam. I was wrong. The gig was on Saturday. I got a call at 6pm on Saturday, from Susan Kay Wyatt, singer with the Jack Lantz band. Turns out the date had been mistated earlier in emails and I had not picked up the change to Saturday from the discussion in emails. Oddly, myself and one other player in the band had been discussing a supposed conflict with a, now-cancelled gig on Sunday earlier. This player finally figured out that the gig was on Saturday and sent an email to the effect of wanting to clear up which day it was. . .but I didn't pick up on the idea that it was SATURDAY. . .

Anyway, the gig went well after my race over to La Canada, and Sunday was great fun playing jazz and hanging, with my trombone idol, Dick Nash. . . .Only in Hollywood. . .land of dreams. . .

One thing I'm finding out. . not to any surprise, mind you. . .is that Ted Nash (the younger) is doing very well in NYC. He is friends with Wynton Marsalis and is doing quite a bit in the jazz scene over there. He is a deserving artist. Very talented and dedicated. Apparently, Bill Nash, Dick's younger son also is doing well making guitars and playing music. What a family!

Doing at least a few gigs or rehearsals a week right now, so the chops are pretty good. . .hope to keep on. . keeping on.

Chris

Update after Nice Weekend

2005-09-19T06:36:00.000-07:00

I thank you for your comment, Meg. I'm glad you are interested and I'll be glad to help out with your blogging if you need any. It's actually not too hard once you get into it.

I had a remarkable weekend, myself. I had listed in my calendar, a bunch of things to do on Sunday. I had my regular duty as "sound man" at church at the 9:30am service. This service turned out to be a very interesting one, since we had a guest deliver the sermon. This was the President of the University of Claremont Theology Seminary (I'm not sure of the name, but the speaker was quite eloquent and very human, yet erudite).

Then, I had scheduled a possible "jam session" at 2pm in Playa Del Rey. This is run by ace trombonist Dick Nash. Dick was head honcho here in town all through the sixties and more. Now Dick is more retired from the day to day studio biz, but he is active in concerts and is frequently recognized as the legend he is. He's also really a profoundly nice guy and fun to just "hang with". So I had hoped to go down to the jam. . but I was doubtful, because I had a 6pm gig listed at the La Canada United Methodist Church.

Well, I got a call about 6pm Saturday, from the girl singer with the Jack Lantz band (the one with the supposed Sunday gig) and she told me the gig was about to start. She asked how soon I could be there. I said "twenty minutes" and proceded to break a whole bunch of speeding laws on my way over to the church located near JPL north of Pasadena.

The gig went great. I showed up and the first trombone player, Lori Stuntz, passed "Laura" from the Kenton standards library over to me. I sat down with the mouthpiece barely stuck in place in time. . .

I did kinda "kick butt" on this one. I'm usually pretty good when the adrenaline is runny high. . . so the legend continues. . . .["he just sits down and then he. . ."]

Anyway, it was fun to play a set on the new Stainless Steel Giddings and Webster mouthpiece. It sounds and feels great. AND it's very easy to keep clean.

Anyway. This odd change of plans allowed me to go and spend the entire jam session time down at Playa Del Rey. So I brought my laptop and recorded the time that I was there. Dick was his usual really nice sounding and nice-guy self. And I was able to contribute some jazz too.

Unfortunately, I got quite a bit of wind "bump" in the mic. I hadn't thought to put on the wind screen. It still seems to have captured the spirit of the thing. I'll have to see if I can get the low wind noise out using digital processing tricks.

This jam session is worthy of note, especially since it has been going on every year on Jeannie Moody's birthday for more than twenty years. There is a picture on the wall of Dick Nash doing this thing back when he had a big head of dark hair. I'd say that might be the late sixties or early seventies.

More on this after I figure out the mastering of the recording. The audio is definitely there. I'm listening to a good harmonica solo on "Prelude to a Kiss". We had Dave MacKay on Piano, Dick on trombone, Pinky Winters and LucyAnn Polk for singer duty, Dick Goldsmith on trumpet in the early part of the jam; Vince Fanneli on tenor sax all nite. Joe Correrro played drums And a young bass player named Justin Valdivia (he's going to be quite a good bass player. . .good feel).

Of course I got to play a little. Particularly nice was a solo with Bill Sinclair on Piano and me on trombone. Bill switched out on keys when Dave took a break. That's the way this thing goes. It's informal but regularly scheduled, with some folk as sort of regular attendees. Others just pop in. . .like me.

I've been busy as you can tell, I hope to get more pictures up and so on. Maybe I'll take some photos of the very nice jitterbug dance crowd at Alpine Village this Monday night. It would be a good record of what that regular gig is like. Also, its "Ocktoberfest" at AV right now, so maybe there is additional stuff going on. . .who knows?

Chris

BLOG! Welcome to those new to Blogging

2005-09-13T11:21:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Meg Stansberry and Agi Salgo. I've posted this just after we spoke about Blogging. As you can see, this is a perfect medium for immediate documentation of important stuff AS IT HAPPENS.

You can look down in April and May archives at the lower right of the blog and see some interesting stuff that has happened, my weblog entries about them, and some things in the Blogosphere that piqued my interest. Be sure to click on some of the links, you will be sent to other blogs. Just hit "BACK" and you will be back here. . .where you are highly APPRECIATED.

COMMENTS are totally welcome. If you think I can improve anything, or my ideas are goofy. . .THAT IS GREAT! I want to know. . .

Welcome to the blogosphere. It can be very informative, odd. . .and funny and everything that people are. . .

See you.

Chris

New Career?

2005-08-15T10:03:00.000-07:00

I've been spending so much time with Visual Basic and VBA code lately that my love of computer programming has risen up and pretty much taken over . . .again!

The last time I felt this way was during my stay working at Falcon Cable TV companies. I made up numerous macro and design improvements to various spreadsheets while working there. I realized then that coding would be a fun profession, but I did not want to consider moving from one, relatively complicated profession--accounting--into another relatively complicated profession--programming.

Now, I realize that programming comprises many different areas, including a very large training component, which I know I enjoy and a creative component, which I know I enjoy and has rewards that seem to match the "Edison Gene" type of personality that I seem to have.

I guess the best next steps are to continue to use the books I've bought in Visual Basic and SQL and Access to create solutions to different problems. The more comfortable I get with Access and other database back ends, while learning to code in VB, the better equipped I'll be to work as an addendum to an accounting department. This is actually a fairly common type of worker in a mid-sized and larger company. There are persons who are exclusively tasked with adapting databases to various business aspects and creating an interface with them to allow workers to use the database.

We'll see. This job of doing extended temp assigments also seems to line up pretty well with this as a career path. It will be interesting to see if Pandora Kehoe can come up with an assignment which uses my computer skill enough. Of course simply using accounting skills is fun too! That's like doing puzzles. . .

Chris

Since I'm buried writing code I ran into this!

2005-08-11T10:51:00.000-07:00

Since I've been writing VBA code and SQL and working in ACCESS and EXCEL a lot recently , I have been reading stuff on developer oriented sites. This article in a developer site strikes me as interesting. Apparently a new way of combining Java and XML called AJAX (that's the non-proprietary or "open" version anyway) provides for background processes of fairly unlimited capability to be running on your client machine during webbrowsing. This could lead to the development of keystroke loggers and similar snooping devices for use in commercial websites.

Apparently it is not trivial to detect this kind of activity because there is no clear evidence in the embedded Javascript in pages. the XMLHttpRequest function can apparently create a conversation with the server while you are doing something else. . .like writing in Word, or entering info into a spreadsheet and so forth. . .

I'm sure the NSA will like this. . .

I guess I'll always be a little paranoid. . .wait! I'd be paranoid if it wasn't pretty obvious there are people out there watching . . .after finding out about the Clipper Chip and then ECHELON and so on, it's pretty obvious efforts are underway to eavesdrop on computer users at least in some ways. . .

My first thought is to keep a Network Analysis tool going all the time and try and figure out what any obviously suspicious conversations are going on in the "meat" of or the "wrapper" of the TCP/IP packets. Ethereal is a very nice FREE bit of software that allows you to monitor each and every TCP/IP packet. This log could then be parsed and so on... Hopefully someone with good parser writing skills will write a tool like this for monitoring our incoming and outgoing packets.

Hopefully whoever implements a keystroke logger doesn't go to the trouble of also writing built-in encryption making the packets unintelligible.

It may also be possible to squelch this kind of eavesdropping using facilities available in IP version 6. I'm still not up to speed on the specifics of the new protocol, but I understand that net location obfuscation is more difficult in that protocol.

Well don't write anything you don't want on the FRONT PAGE of the paper!

Chris

America's Suburb.com: Frequently asked questions

2005-06-28T21:39:00.000-07:00

America's Suburb.com: Frequently asked questions

This is a site maintained by author, Kevin Roderick. His book "The San Fernando Valley - America's Suburb" is an excellent introduction to the history of the San Fernando Valley. You can tell that Roderick, who grew up in the "Valley" certainly loves and appreciates the place. I, too, count myself as Valley bred and raised.

It is fun to look around me now as I drive near my home and see things I didn't notice before. I can still see the signs of the old valley, though they are getting fewer as time marches on.

Anti-Subjugator: Thanks America

2005-06-09T20:36:00.000-07:00

Anti-Subjugator: Thanks America

This is SOooooooo Very Good!

Thanks to this most excellent Australian. I knew that I liked it "down under". . .One of these days I must go and visit down there. Australia and New Zealand. Both are beautiful in their own way.

Based upon this post to a "blogspot" blog. . .I gotta like the Australian!

PS-8/15

Apparently the author of this blog is quite an unusual fellow. He seems to be advocating the creation of a new branch (or seeking to fill up an existing small offshoot) of Islam. He has defined this religion pretty much using just a few points, such as emphasizing THE GOLDEN RULE. . . .fighting SUBJUGATION. . .emphasizing TRUE ALTRUISM. . .and so on. You can see more at the Anti-Subjugation Blog.

[meanwhile I've been researching the history and philosophy around subjugation of humans. . .there is a lot written around the subject of "Tyranny", which is related, I believe]

It seems Mr. Edwards, of Sydney, Australia is a very bright fellow indeed. He, like me, is involved in coding programming for computer use. We shall have to see how he fares in spreading his version of this religion.

2005-05-29T16:45:00.000-07:00

Here is former California Academic Decathlon Executive Director, Marvin Cobb with Richard Riordan, California Secretary of Education. Marvin was fired by the Board of CAD only a few weeks ago, in their dissembling while axeing Cobb, they stated that two of the largest donors to the Decathlon did not want Cobb as director. It's possible that Riordan's foundation was one of these. The Riordan Foundation promised to fund the 2005 CAD event, but initially balked at paying the money over to CAD . There is a very convoluted story involving so-called Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), which, luckily I'm very much familiar with. . . .

U.S. Proposal in the O.A.S. Draws Fire as an Attack on Venezuela - New York Times

2005-05-22T12:42:00.000-07:00

U.S. Proposal in the O.A.S. Draws Fire as an Attack on Venezuela - New York Times: "Last month, however, he and other administration officials made several statements tying the effort directly to their concern about Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's populist, anti-American president. Mr. Chavez has curtailed some press freedoms and judicial independence while forming close ties with Cuba, an alliance that, more than anything else, infuriates some Bush administration officials."

EXAMINE THE ABOVE TEXT FROM THE NYT ARTICLE!

Do you see anything patently illogical? Let me help. . . .the New York Times espouses freedom of the press. . . .the New York Times is concerned about "the independence of the judiciary" unless we are talking about red-shirted and communist leaning latin-american leaders. Hugo Chavez is just another country's leader to the Times. The respect that is paid to these tyrants is beyond my understanding. Chavez is in the process of joining Castro as the "Executioner of the Year" in Latin America. There are freedom loving people there in Venezuela, who are now wondering what their future will hold. Will they ever have a leader other than Mr. Chavez? Not if Mr. Chavez has a say. . . .

The text here is bizarre--"infuriates some Bush administration officials"? Which officials are not mad at this stuff? In fact which Republicans are not absolutely outraged at a union of these two despicable tyrants? The answer: NONE. . . .everybody knows that this is an evil marriage made in HELL! Well, the gullible Hollywood liberal like Steven Spielberg probably thinks this is just another very adroit action by the charming Mr. Castro. . . .What a MAROON! That is why we don't often look to the entertainment community for our leaders. . .they are just as likely to be taken in by a Carnival Barker, as to BE a Carnival Barker. . .but that is another story. . .

Why does a sovereign nation such as Venezuela need to have massive foreign aid from a nation such as Cuba? Since massive burearcratic support from Cuba (already completely documented. . .) cannot possibly be to increase wealth in oil-rich Venezuela, does it seem to you that Mr. Chavez most likely wants to exert the kind of control over his populace that has been set and maintained for decades in Cuba? That is my theory. . .Chavez is seeking to reproduce the Castro-effect. . .a lifelong dictator-ship which defies all logic and lasts beyond all reckoning.

Perhaps this sad situation might be an interesting test of several parties:

The Hollywood liberal cabal will be tested to see if they understand ANYTHING about reality. . . .If they do, they will visit the downtrodden in Cuba and Venezuela

The liberal press will be tested to see if they report the actions in Cuba and Venezuela accurately and sufficiently. . . .If they actually do their job they will report the atrocities in these countries. . .they've already HINTED as some (curtailing judicial and press portions of society)

Our government will be tested to see if they back down in the face of the two country coalition between oil-rich Venezuela and Communism-rich Cuba. . . Since we've got a decent administration this time, I predict that there will be no backing down from our Executive government.

But!

Why does this newspaper word this article like this? Don't they understand that Fidel Castro was welcomed to New York city as an American who had liberated his county and was going to bring Democracy to the island nation of Cuba, only to have Castro turn to the U.S.S.R. and betray the United States, the country that taught him so much? Fidel Castro was always and always will be a very clever opportunist. He is taking the opportunity of dealing with this neighbor and running with it. . . .perhaps he can annex Venezuela and its wealth? Maybe they start an organization of socialist states in Latin America? Who knows? Regardless, the union is intended to benefit two persons above all: Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez!

This is the law of unintended consequences shown large: The revolutionary intends to help the proletariat, the ordinary worker. . .in reality, the regular guy is the last person on the list of those helped by Socialism and Communism. We've seen this over and over and over. . .it's been well established!

MY OPINION:

No attack on these two can be enough! They are evil! Think! You will come to that conclusion in the end!

2005-05-21T18:29:00.001-07:00

On the way to the Toronto venue we saw some of the town from our bus.

2005-05-21T18:29:00.000-07:00

Warming up in Toronto.

2005-05-21T18:28:00.001-07:00

Here is the venue for London, ON. This was large.

2005-05-21T18:28:00.000-07:00

Looking up from the area near the river Thames to see the city of London. . at right is part of the auditorium

2005-05-21T18:27:00.001-07:00

More of the Thames in London, ON

2005-05-21T18:27:00.000-07:00

This is near the theatre in London, ON. There is a Thames river running through idyllic spaces.

2005-05-21T18:26:00.000-07:00

The canals in the capital run right behind the theatre. This city of Ottawa is truly beautiful

2005-05-21T18:25:00.001-07:00

Canada's capital. The roofs are copper and become green with oxidation.

2005-05-21T18:25:00.000-07:00

Another, more modern venue.

2005-05-21T18:24:00.000-07:00

In the Burton Cummings theatre. This was a nice old theatre. . .and supposedly it's HAUNTED! I didn't hear anything spooky, but you can't help but think about ghosts in one of these really old places.

2005-05-21T18:23:00.001-07:00

Stage setting at another venue

2005-05-21T18:23:00.000-07:00

Believe it or not, this sign was at the back of the hockey rink used for our performance. I thought it funny that Dino gets everywhere!

2005-05-21T18:22:00.000-07:00

Here is an example of the size venue we performed at. Several of the shows were in major municipal auditoriums.

2005-05-21T18:21:00.000-07:00

Here is the mixing console that went around Canada with us. Our production head was great with us getting decent sound no matter what. . .he was also a very comforting and cool presence during the most difficult times.

2005-05-21T18:20:00.000-07:00

Here is the stage setting for the show. A big band orchestra with "Sands" orchestra stands and a large backdrop with many images of things Vegas and of the rat pack members.

2005-05-21T18:19:00.000-07:00

This must be what the bar looks like to Dino. . .a little blurry but easily found . . .I was trying to get used to setting low light shots on my camera and some came out better than others. . .this shows the "gestalt" of a rat pack show. . .this is a reproduction of the shows done by Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr. and others throughout the late fifties and early sixties.

2005-05-21T18:17:00.000-07:00

Drummer Drew Hemwall, is having a pleasant time. . .he got us in and out of many a tempo change and many a que. DH is quite an excellent drummer.

2005-05-21T18:16:00.000-07:00

Here is our Dean Martin and fearless leader, Steve Apple sharing a joke or two with a crew member. We are playing here on a converted hocky rink. . .It wasn't cold at all. . it was just right!

2005-05-21T18:15:00.000-07:00

Bass player Larry Walters, and trombonist Don Gustafson enjoying their ferry ride from Vancouver, B.C. to nearby Vancouver island and the site of our first gig of the Canada tour.

2005-05-21T18:13:00.000-07:00

Ace jazz trumpeter Bob Summers looks like he'll be relieved to get out of all these crowded airports. . .we are winding down the end of our tour with a layover in O'Hare airport, Chicago.

2005-05-21T18:12:00.000-07:00

Our band worked hard and had great fun, while touring Canada with "Direct from Vegas, The Rat Pack!"

A Letter to CAD BOD from the Coach of ECR

2005-05-18T07:30:00.000-07:00

THIS IS A LETTER FROM EL CAMINO COACH CHRISTIAN CERONE TO THE CA ACADEMIC DECATHLON BOARD

May 12, 2005

Jeff McCombs
President, Board of Directors
California Academic Decathlon
18757 Burbank Blvd., Suite 220
Tarzana, CA 91356-3375

Mr. McCombs:

In last week’s article discussing the termination of Marvin Cobb, the LA Times wrote of you: “He said he could not discuss circumstances of Cobb’s departure, calling it a confidential ‘personnel matter.’” We all understand you meant to say personal matter, right? Otherwise, there doesn’t seem to be any justification for firing Marvin without any prior fair and appropriate disciplinary action. On the day of his termination, you shared this gem with the county coordinators: “This is Marvin Cobb’s last day as executive director and we wish him the best of luck.” Did you actually think we’d believe he stepped down willingly, after winning three consecutive national titles, or is this another misrepresentation of what you truly meant to say? I can’t remember reading a more egregious example of cowardice in avoidance of the truth, and I know I’m not alone on this.

I’m the first to admit I’m unaware of the deep, secret inner workings of the CAD board. I know little about so called oversight issues and nothing about your working relationship with Marvin, aside from the fact that you apparently held differing visions of his job description. I know the man made mistakes just like the rest of us. But, after six years of coaching and after celebrating three state and national titles in those years, I do feel I’m qualified to talk about the role of the executive director from the perspective from which it matters most—as the liaison between him and the students. If you truly believe that your mission as board president is solely to ensure a positive experience for the young men and women who participate in the decathlon, you’re having a hell of a time convincing me by getting rid of the one man on the staff who consistently showed his priorities lay in the best interest of students. If Marvin didn’t push enough paper or pencils fast enough for you, it’s because his focus was on making his program the best possible experience for students. Like so many other bureaucrats, you hide in your corporate office behind the easy line that your priorities are for “doing what’s best for the kids.” Marvin lived and breathed that sentiment in the trenches with those of us working directly with them. Under his tenure, California went from becoming a competitive state in a field of several, to the only place where the national title resides. This year, any one of the top five teams in California most likely would have gone on to win the national title, and we had to work so extremely hard for the privilege to represent that field of excellence in Chicago. And while the fierce competition has created complaints about unfairness from within the state, Marvin sought to solve that problem by raising the quality and commitment of the weaker programs instead of handicapping the strongest teams to bring them down to the level of those crying foul. I personally spoke at one of Marvin’s coaches’ workshops in Sacramento in an effort to stimulate the competition in Northern California by openly telling them exactly what we do to win, explaining how and why it is beneficial to our students, and welcoming any challenge to equal that effort. Apparently a select few winning schools in California weren’t enough for Marvin to rest on his laurels.

You should be ashamed for putting your personal issues above “doing what’s best for the kids” and creating a sham performance evaluation to justify your selfishly guided desires. Had one of these evaluations been levied on Marvin’s predecessor, at least from the perspective of the coaches and students who had the “pleasure” of working with her, I laugh to think of the results. Marvin has 100 times more heart, 100 times more understanding of what makes this program so beneficial to young people, and worked 100 times harder to make the program as successful as possible. I’d say that is a far cry from someone who seemed accountable to no one but her own interests and always took the path of least resistance when it came to problem solving and strengthening the program. Where was the board’s concern for “doing what’s best for the kids” under her tenure?

The vagueness behind your comments only implies you have no justification for dismissing Marvin, and if you don’t have the fortitude to be open and honest about your professional differences, whom can we trust? I’m grateful this was my last year as a coach for many reasons. I’m grateful I got to finish my career with the most closely bonded and hard working group of students of I’ve ever known. I’m grateful we rebounded from a disappointing loss at the city competition, only to beat the odds and become the first wild card team to win the state and national titles. I’m grateful I got to step down on top, feeling the best I’ve ever felt about the academic decathlon and what it has done for my students throughout all my years of coaching. And I’m grateful I’ll never again experience the shame of being associated with your board of directors and the damage you have caused to this program.

Sincerely,

Christian Cerone
Head Coach, Academic Decathlon
El Camino Real High School

2005-05-15T00:07:00.000-07:00

It's kinda cool to see this stuff back stage. . .maybe I'm in "the big league. . ."

2005-05-15T00:05:00.000-07:00

Bassist Larry Walters has "been there and, done that". . .it's great to talk to him about his decades playing Disneyland, or maybe Woody, or some such music giant. . ., besides that Larry is a pilot and an interesting companion. . .never short on wisdom!

2005-05-14T23:56:00.000-07:00

Studying IS FUN! When you participate in the California Academic Decathlon. . .here we see some attendees at the Ice Cream Social at the LAX Marriott.

2005-05-14T23:54:00.000-07:00

Some help with funding the Chicago trip from CAD sponsor ALL Student Loans

2005-05-14T23:53:00.000-07:00

Media and friends are covering the success!

2005-05-14T23:52:00.000-07:00

It's down to just Moorpark HS in Ventura, CA and El Camino Real HS in LA Unified. . .who are they going to announce as "second place"?

2005-05-14T23:50:00.000-07:00

Early before the "event". . .not any room will do for this. . .there has to be a certain capacity.

2005-05-14T23:49:00.000-07:00

A gigantic test was never this fun. . .until Acadec made it into a contest! In the morning of first testing.

2005-05-14T23:47:00.000-07:00

Perhaps an AC DC fan. . .or just devoted to the academic decathlon? At the awards ceremony.

2005-05-14T23:46:00.000-07:00

It's not all hard work. . .Acadec makes sure that there is some time off to enjoy fun and games with fellow decathletes. . .

2005-05-14T23:45:00.001-07:00

It seems we brought a "friend" to cheer our team on. . .

2005-05-14T23:45:00.000-07:00

Every school in the state of California is welcome to compete in this very "healthy academic battle".